A conventional electronic component includes a type, as illustrated in FIG. 4, which is obtained by: winding an electrically-conductive wire to form a coil 41; burying a plurality of such a coil 41 in a composite magnetic material containing a magnetic powder and a resin, and cutting the composite magnetic material to form a molded body 42, while exposing led-out ends of the coil 41 on a surface of the molded body 42; forming an external terminal electrode 43 on the surface of the molded body 42 on which the led-out ends 41A, 41B of the coil 41 is exposed; and connecting the led-out ends of the coil 41 to the external terminal electrode (see JP 2011-009618A).
In recent years, this type of electronic component is used, for example, for an inductor or a transformer for a power circuit or a DC/DC converter through which a large electric current flows because the coil can be disposed in a high magnetic permeability material to improve DC superimposition characteristic by using a metallic magnetic powder as the magnetic powder.
In this type of conventional electronic component, the coil is formed by winding the electrically-conductive wire, which makes it possible to diminish a DC resistance as compared to a laminated electronic component.
In the conventional electronic component, each of the led-out ends of the coil is led out at right angle with respect to the surface of the molded body, and thus a contact area of each led-out end of the coil with the external terminal electrode is inevitably determined by a thickness of the electrically-conductive wire. Therefore, the conventional electronic component cannot have a sufficient contact area for a junction of each led-out end of the coil with the external terminal electrode, which leads to a tendency of having an increased DC resistance. To overcome this problem, it is conceivable to have a larger thickness of electrically-conductive wire so as to increase the contact area of each led-out end of the coil with the external terminal electrode. However, such an electronic component becomes undesirably larger in size in an attempt to obtain a predetermined inductance value. Among this type of electronic components, those being compact in size and having a good performance are desired, but it has not been possible for the conventional electronic component to fulfill such a demand.